A place for a tired old woman to try to figure things out so that the world makes a bit of sense.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Campaign Season

Sometimes the campaign season brings some good things to the public. This week California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, who is running for re-election and who appears to have a comfortable lead, signed a bill that has some positive implications for California energy development. From yesterday's LA Times:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that aims to make the state one of the world's biggest producers of solar energy.

The legislation, which cleared the state Senate last week, calls for the installation of 1 million rooftop solar panels on homes, businesses, farms, schools and public buildings by 2018.

The solar power systems would generate 3,000 megawatts of power and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 3 million tons, equivalent to taking 1 million cars off the state's highways and making California the third-biggest solar power producer, after Japan and Germany.

There are several interesting things about this article beyond the righteous movement towards solar energy in one of the nation's largest states. The first is that a governor who has spent the last several years of his term catering to big business and the conservatives in California has decided to move back to the center for the election. Whatever his reasons for signing this bill, at least he signed it. This is good news for California.

The second is the placement of this article. What is cited above is the entirety of the article (which came off the Reuters wire) and it is buried deep within the paper. Anyone who doesn't read the paper in its entirety would have missed it. This is bad news for Los Angeles and for California.

Still, the bill has been signed into law, and with its implementation California should make great strides toward securing reliable energy and cleaner air.